Daleel with SP Singh fea­tures Devin­der Sharma, one of In­di­a’s renowned agri­cul­ture and food se­cu­rity-re­lated poli­cies’ an­a­lyst, dis­cussing Con­gress’ NYAY, Uni­ver­sal Ba­sic In­come, Poverty and Pol­i­tics in Elec­tions.

WSN in­vites you to view this thought-pro­vok­ing dis­cus­sion on what is the Uni­ver­sal Ba­sic In­come Frame­work and how is it go­ing to work in In­dia. What has been the ex­pe­ri­ence of other world economies and what im­pact it will have on the gen­eral elec­tions in In­dia?

This show dis­cusses whether and if a min­i­mum guar­an­teed in­come by the state will work for the few mil­lion poor­est of the poor in In­dia.

With the Modi gov­ern­ment float­ing the PM-KISAN scheme, giv­ing Rs 6,000 a year to mar­ginal farm­ers, and Rahul Gandhi re­spond­ing with the Con­gress’ promise to give Rs 6,000 a month in cash to 20% of the coun­try’s poor, In­dia is tak­ing gin­gerly steps to­wards a Uni­ver­sal Ba­sic In­come frame­work.

While the Con­gress is say­ing that the out­lay for the ex­ist­ing schemes, like MN­REGA, Food Se­cu­rity etc, will not be dis­con­tin­ued to bring in its Nyay – Nyun­tam Aay Yo­jana – ex­perts say a Rs 6,000 per month largesse to 5 crore poor fam­i­lies will re­sult in a Rs 3.6 lakh crore ex­pen­di­ture, half of In­di­a’s es­ti­mated fis­cal deficit for 2019-20.

Devin­der Sharma, one of In­di­a’s renowned agri­cul­ture and food se­cu­rity-re­lated poli­cies’ an­a­lyst, ar­gues that NYAY can ac­tu­ally work in In­dia, though no one is sure if it will first work for Con­gress.

The con­ver­sa­tion fo­cuses on the fact that the Modi gov­ern­men­t’s own Eco­nomic Sur­vey 2016-2017 es­ti­mated that the Uni­ver­sal Ba­sic In­come could sig­nif­i­cantly re­duce poverty if it cov­ered 75 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion. In June 2017, Arun Jait­ley backed the UBI idea pro­posed by Arvind Sub­ra­man­ian but said it may not be po­lit­i­cally fea­si­ble in In­dia con­cluded that “the The Eco­nomic Sur­vey 2016-2017 con­cluded that Ma­hatma Gandhi “would have been con­flicted by the idea but, on bal­ance, might have en­dorsed it.”

WSN is proud to fea­ture se­nior jour­nal­ist, SP Singh’s work. Aimed at the in­tel­li­gent, ar­gu­men­ta­tive, ed­u­cated Pun­jabi, “Daleel with SP Singh” re­mains highly con­tent dri­ven.

WSN will reg­u­larly share the YouTube video of his weekly show. SP Singh will en­gage you with con­tem­po­rary po­lit­i­cal and so­cial is­sues, but un­like the quin­tes­sen­tial tele­vi­sion de­bates, you will be proud of the lay­ered, nu­anced and in­ter-dis­ci­pli­nary ap­proach. A few min­utes into the show and you will re­alise that SP Singh will en­gage you, ques­tion you, pro­voke you, rat­tle you and even leave you numb at times.